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The Dark Side Of Uranus

A rare glimpse of Uranus’s dark side is hinting at the planet’s recent turbulant times, researchers say.

The first image of Uranus snapped by a ground-based telescope—the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii—shows for the first time the dusty rings edge-on to the Earth (bottom), offering a unique view of their dark side.

The solar system’s seventh planet was discovered in 1781, but its rings weren’t found until 1977. NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft sent back the first images of the rings in 1986.